Irons in the Fire, Projects in the Hopper

The holiday season is always hectic, and doubly so when you’re trying to catch up on all the life you ignored during NaNoWriMo. I have oodles of friends to see and holiday hubbub to take care of, but as the year winds down I thought I’d just talk a little bit about what projects I’m trying to wrap up before 2016 comes barrelling in.

1. The Neverland Wars II: Piper’s Invasion

I’m not going to lie, this is getting backburned a bit and certainly won’t be fully drafted until mid-January at the earliest. My NaNoWriMo novel is far from finished at 54,000 words, and it is intimidating to try to keep up with it now that the intensity of November has passed. Still, I’m about 75% through it and am looking forward to having a first draft to edit and then send off to my beta readers before the first one even comes out.

2. The Haunting of Haywood Manor

This is my most pressing project, since I have to have it completely pulled together by Tuesday! Yikes! It is my annual murder mystery party, which I’ve written about before on this blog. Every year when people are back in town for Christmas, I write an interactive plot to be improvised on, giving a bunch of old high school friends characters to be and homicides to solve. This year’s takes place at the wake and will reading of an estranged, wealthy, old relative whose estate is said to be haunted. I’m running a little bit behind, but I’m sure it will all come together in the end…

3. The Neverland Wars (Publishing!)

I hardly feel like this should count as writing, but I’m putting so much more time into it than anything else…writing vlogs, writing blogs, writing tweets, writing promotion plans, writing companion pieces, and little promotional stories/poems. It is a whirlwind of excitement, but not nearly as whimsical, fanciful, and creative as all the rest of my projects…just trying to figure out how to spread the word that The Neverland Wars is now available for preorder

4. Big Story for HO_OKED

I can’t tell you how excited I am about this one! As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been writing for the literary app, Hooked, and published, at this point, 11 different flash-fiction dialogue stories. After a few months of prep and a few months on market, they’re now getting ready to try something a little different. I’m very happy to say I’m going to be writing a new kind of story for them, one that I think will resonate more with my existing readership, too.

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It might not sound like a lot, but I assure you that this all keeps me very busy. How wonderful to sit back and look at what my JOB is though! I never would have imagined that anything like Hooked would happen, but because it has I’m able to focus on just writing and marketing these next few months before my book release. Then again, I’ve also got a ton of story ideas incubating in my brain. There’s rumors floating around with the characters that I’m going to be starting a new novel as soon as I finish drafting Piper’s Invasion…but it’s too far out to tell 😉